While part of me agrees with Yumiko and Christine - technology has improved some aspects of our lives such as food production and medical care - there is also no denying that in addition to causing harm to our environment, some technologies have left us with a deteriorated quality of life. Our ability to think creatively has been diminished by mass media and and non-participatory entertainment. Because of this, we are unable to effectively use technology to reduce our impact on the environment to the extent necessary.
In the past 30 years there have been a number of technological advances that have prevented toxins from escaping into the atmosphere. We have developed SO2 scrubbers and hybrid cars. But these "solutions" do not address the true problems behind sulfur or CO2 emissions. SO2 scrubbers do not reduce the amount of sulfur being produced, but merely capture that SO2. Hybrid cars do not address the harms of personal transportation or fossil fuel dependence, but merely reduce the CO2 emitted (and they're not even particularly good at that).
Technology has allowed us to create solutions for symptoms while still denying the severity of the underlying cause. What is worse is that many of the problems we face arise from previous technological advances. Yes, it is wonderful that we are able to produce enough food for our ever-growing population due to agricultural technologies, but would we have the problem of over population and land-use change (forest to cropland) that we have if we had never developed the farm technology we have today?
We must accept that technology cannot be the solution to our environmental problems, if we continue to deny the root of those problems.
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